to the harmoniousness of the design on which the work was built. Milton's familiarity with the Bible was such that the whole range of ornament which lies in the beauty of biblical phraseology and the organ-tones of mere biblical nomenclature was at his command as it never had been at that of any writer before, and was certainly never likely to be again. But what was much more was that the initiated poet's intimacy with his theme, recast as it was by his own original genius, was such as to suggest the same kind of inspiration-the same kind, not the same degree-as that which spoke to men through the writers of the sacred books themselves. What was it in these labours of Milton that seemed chiefly to move us on the eve of the tercentenary of his birth to add to the wreaths laid

upon his tomb by future generations? In the first instance, the gift which was his in so marvellous a measure that to no other English writer at least, in prose or verse, did it seem so distinctively to belong; the gift, too, which from the days of his youth onwards he had recognized as his, and which he had cultivated with religious assiduity, in sunshine and in shade, as the one talent which it is' death to hide '-till in the evening of his days he returned it tenfold to the giver-the gift best defined by the one 'style.' The early poems showed that his masters and teachers had judged him aright, by striking that note of perfection which implied the constant presence, the controlling influence, of the ideal. That gift had continued operative when he had exchanged poetry for prose. He followed, in different essays, different classical models, but the genius of Milton's style

was not one which could take its form from predecessors or rivals.

"The real secret of Milton's style lay far deeper than any question as to the use made by him of the stories which lay open to him as a student. Even the gladiatorial passages in his prose at times suffered a sea-change and turned of a sudden into a thing of exquisite beauty and celestial loftinessas when in the Second Defence he rose from trivial retorts upon More's scurrility to dwell on the single topic of his blindness. Whence came this power of self-recovery? Many years before Milton began to write Paradise Lost he had in a single sentence unlocked the secret of the power supremely attested by that work and its sequel. He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem.' That elevation of soul was the motive force of Milton's genius and the chief formative element in the growth and consummation of his style."

The Times of December 9 printed in large type a poem by George Meredith written for the occasion, and if you want to see how far behind Milton in language, rhythm, dignity of expression and intelligible sense the so-called poets of to-day come panting on his track, you have only to read the poem if you can, but you will be able to judge if I give you the last twelve lines

We need him now,

This latest Age in repetition cries:

For Belial, the adroit, is in our midst;

Mammon, more swoln to squeeze the slavish sweat
From hopeless toil: and overshadowingly

(Aggrandized, monstrous in his grinning mask
Of hypocritical Peace), inveterate Moloch
Remains the great example.

Homage to him

His debtor band, innumerable as waves

Running all golden from an eastern sun,
Joyfully render, in deep reverence

Subscribe, and as they speak their Milton's name,
Rays of his glory on their foreheads bear.

It will take the taste of sawdust out of our mouths perhaps if we read now Wordsworth's sonnet called London 1802.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: Altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower
Have forfeited their ancient English Dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, powers.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart :
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Compare Meredith's polysyllables" overshadowingly,' aggrandized, hypocritical" and "inveterate," all in three lines, with the simple monosyllabic purity of "Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea.' That was written about a hundred years ago. But to show that we still have men who can write prose if not verse I will now quote you a part of the Leading Article in The Times of December 9

"A famous passage in Johnson's Life of Milton begins with these words: Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked

his reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterranean current through fear and silence.' When this was written, about a century after Milton's death, fear and silence had long ceased. He was then esteemed the only English poet comparable in greatness to Shakespeare; and now that we are celebrating the tercentenary of his birth he still holds the same rank, although in the interval many great poets have lived, although there has been a revolution in the theory and practice of poetry, and although his conception of the universe seems more strange and remote with every new addition made to human knowledge and experience. Milton himself seems strange and remote to us, not merely because he was born 300 years ago, but because he varied, far more than most great poets, from the kindly race of men. All his life he was travelling further and further away from sympathy with them. He was withdrawn, not only by his blindness, but by the action of his own mind, from that intercourse with his fellows by which the genius of Shakespeare must have been incessantly inspired and enriched. True, he was not a mere dreamer, but a man of affairs, the fierce partisan of the victors in the Civil War, and the servant of their great leader. It was certainly not timidity or inexperience that estranged him from the world, but rather the conviction, strengthened by experience, that he was unlike other men, and that he was right to be unlike them. He had little in common even with his own allies. He is often called the Puritan poet; but, beyond a high disdain for incontinence and all vulgar pleasures, there was nothing Puritanic about him. The

author of Comus was writing as a Royalist for Royalists when he gave the world that best of all masks. He had no Puritan fear of delight or distrust of the senses; and, though he was a republican and against all ritual in the worship of men, he excels in describing the pomp and ritual of Heaven. The difference between his poetry and the poetry of Anglicans like Herbert and Vaughan is the very opposite of what we should expect from their opinions. They try to set up a lonely and intimate relation between God and themselves and to tell secrets that are not to be overheard even by the Angels. But his imagination is content with the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory. He who questioned all earthly authority, was far less concerned to justify the ways of God to men than these lesser and more anxious poets. He had so despotic a mind that unconsciously he took the ways of God to be his own ways and condemned all who were against him as rebels against the Divine order. . . .

"Milton, if he were alive now, would not ask for our love. He would demand that his nature should be judged by its fruits. As a poet, he would be content that we should not understand him, provided we understood his poetry. He lived to make poetry, and everything else that he did was mere by-play. Thus he passed through the angers of controversy unharmed to that business which he had chosen for himself in youth, when he had been inwardly prompted to leave something so written to aftertimes as they should not willingly let it die.' Poetry to him was not a mere escape from reality, but the ordering and perfect