unpopular thinker, and blind withal.  He was left alone for the rest of his days.  He lived first in Jewin Street, off Aldersgate Street; and finally in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields.  He had married, four years after his first wife’s death, a lady who died

within a twelvemonth, though her memory is kept ever fresh, generation after generation, by her husband’s sonnet beginning,

‘Methought I saw my late espoused saint.’

Dr. Johnson, it is really worth remembering, called this a poor sonnet.  In 1664 Milton married a third and last wife, a lady he had never seen, and who survived her husband for no less a period than fifty-three years, not dying till the year 1727.  The poet’s household, like his country, never realized any of his ideals.  His third wife took decent care of him, and there the matter ended.  He did not belong to the category of adored fathers.  His daughters did not love him—it seems even probable they disliked him.  Mr. Pattison has pointed out that Milton never was on terms even with the scholars of his age.  Political acquaintances he had none.  He was, in Puritan language, ‘unconnected with any place of worship,’ and had therefore no pastoral visits to receive, or sermons to discuss.  The few friends he had were mostly young men who were attracted to him, and were glad to give him their company; and it is well that he had this pleasure, for he was ever in his wishes a social man—not intended

to live alone, and blindness must have made society little short of a necessity for him.

Now it was, in the evening of his days, with a Stuart once more upon the throne, and Episcopacy finally installed, that Milton, a defeated thinker, a baffled pamphleteer—for had not Salmasius triumphed?—with Horton and Italy far, far behind him, set himself to keep the promise of his glorious youth, and compose a poem the world should not willingly let die.  His manner of life was this.  In summer he rose at four, in winter at five.  He went to bed at nine.  He began the day with having the Hebrew Scriptures read to him.  Then he contemplated.  At seven his man came to him again, and he read and wrote till an early dinner.  For exercise he either walked in the garden or swung in a machine.  Besides conversation, his only other recreation was music.  He played the organ and the bass viol.  He would sometimes sing himself.  After recreation of this kind he would return to his study to be read to till six.  After six his friends were admitted, and would sit with him till eight.  At eight he had his supper—olives or something light.  He was very abstemious.  After supper he smoked a pipe of tobacco, drank a glass of

water, and went to bed.  He found the night a favourable time for composition, and what he composed at night he dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an elbow chair with his leg thrown over the arm.

In 1664 Paradise Lost was finished, but as in 1665 came the Great Plague, and after the Great Plague the Great Fire, it was long before the MS. found its way into the hands of the licenser.  It is interesting to note that the first member of the general public who read Paradise Lost, I hope all through, was a clergyman of the name of Tomkyns, the deputy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sheldon.  The Archbishop was the State Licenser for religious books, but of course did not do the work himself.  Tomkyns did the work, and was for a good while puzzled what to make of the old Republican’s poem.  At last, and after some singularly futile criticisms, Tomkyns consented to allow the publication of Paradise Lost, which accordingly appeared in 1667, admirably printed, and at the price of 3s. a copy.  The author’s agreement with the publisher is in writing—as Mr. Besant tells us all agreements with publishers should be—and may be seen in the British Museum.  Its terms are clear.  The poet was to have £5 down;

another £5 when the first edition, which was not to exceed 1,500 copies, was sold; a third £5 when a second edition was sold; and a fourth and last £5 when a third edition was sold.  He got his first £5, also his second, and after his death his widow sold all her rights for £5.  Consequently £18, which represents perhaps £50 of our present currency, was Milton’s share of all the money that has been made by the sale of his great poem.  But the praise is still his.  The sale was very considerable.  The ‘general reader’ no doubt preferred the poems of Cleaveland and Flatman, but Milton found an audience which was fit and not fewer than ever is the case when noble poetry is first produced.

Paradise Regained was begun upon the completion of Paradise Lost, and appeared with Samson Agonistes in 1671, and here ended Milton’s life as a producing poet.  He lived on till Sunday, 8th November, 1674, when the gout, or what was then called gout, struck in and he died, and was buried beside his father in the Church of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate.  He remained laborious to the last, and imposed upon himself all kinds of drudgery, compiling dictionaries, histories of Britain and Russia.  He must have worked not so much from love of

his subjects as from dread of idleness.  But he had hours of relaxation, of social intercourse, and of music; and it is pleasant to remember that one pipe of tobacco.  It consecrates your own.

Against Milton’s great poem it is sometimes alleged that it is not read; and yet it must, I think, be admitted that for one person who has read Spenser’s Fairy Queen, ten thousand might easily be found who have read Paradise Lost.  Its popularity has been widespread.  Mr. Mark Pattison and Mr. John Bright measure some ground between them.  No other poem can be mentioned which has so coloured English thought as Milton’s, and yet, according to the French senator whom Mr. Arnold has introduced to the plain reader, ‘Paradise Lost is a false poem, a grotesque poem, a tiresome poem.’  It is not easy for those who have a touch of Milton’s temper, though none of his genius, to listen to this foreign criticism quite coolly.  Milton was very angry with Salmasius for venturing to find fault with the Long Parliament for having repealed so many laws, and so far forgot himself as to say, ‘Nam nostræ leges, Ole, quid ad te?’  But there is nothing municipal about Paradise Lost.  All the world has a

right to be interested in it and to find fault with it.  But the fact that the people for whom primarily it was written have taken it to their hearts and have it on their lips ought to have prevented it being called tiresome by a senator of France.

But what is the matter with our great epic?  That nobody ever wished it longer is no real accusation.  Nobody ever did wish an epic longer.  The most popular books in the world are generally accounted too long—Don Quixote, the Pilgrim’s Progress, Tom Jones.  But, says Mr. Arnold, the whole real interest of the poem depends upon our being able to take it literally; and again, ‘Merely as matter of poetry, the story of the Fall has no special force or effectiveness—its effectiveness for us comes, and can only come, from our taking it all as the literal narrative of what positively happened.’  These bewildering utterances make one rub one’s eyes.  Carlyle comes to our relief: ‘All which propositions I for the