ing of reality as if it were his own kingdom to make what he would of it.

"His art was not impoverished by any distrust of beauty, nor made vague by any metaphysical misgivings. With all his ardour for perfection, he never tried to unthink the material substance of things, to imagine a delight not communicable through the senses, or a purpose in life beyond the comprehension of man. His mind was habitually occupied with ideas of the noblest kind of life possible to man; and these he has expressed in clear unfaltering music, in poems of sure and lucid beauty.

"We think of ideals as vague things and of ideal art as emptied of all character. But Milton's ideals were drawn from life, from his own life, and whatever he represented that was contrary to them he drew from that lower life of the world which he saw clearly from his own eminence.

"Milton, even in his blindness, is scarcely pathetic, because he is above pity. The loss of sight was but a change of circumstance to him; and no change of circumstance could touch that inner life which his spirit lived withdrawn from all the imperfections of this world. His firmness of purpose was hardly tested, indeed, by the triumph of his enemies, as well as by his own blindness; but it endured all tests and triumphed over them in the song of his old age, when

He, though blind of sight,

Despised, and thought extinguish'd quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,

His fiery virtue roused

From under ashes into sudden flame.

Samson Agonistes seems to be something more than a work of art. It moves us, when we read it, like an heroic action, for it represents, not an ideal state of being, but what Milton had made of his own life. Through blindness and defeat he had attained to this, that without presumption or any violence to truth he could be the theme and hero of his own finest verse. Thus the great design of his life was accomplished, and thus he is remembered by posterity."

Milton read continuously but not for the sake of learning; he chose the best of all the literature of all the ages on which to form an ideal style, but it is hard to say which we most wonder at, Milton's immense erudition, or the sweetness of his exquisite early poems, or the vigour of his defence of freedom and liberty, or the patience with which, knowing his poetic calling, he could for twenty long years put it all aside to minister to his country's needs. As soon as he left the University he began to formulate what he proposed to himself as his life's task, the writing of some great dramatic or epic poem, which should be an ornament to the English language. On this he spent years of patient labour, and if we will take the trouble to study it, the greatest of all his attainments we shall unquestionably find to be his blank verse, of which he was so great a master that it was called by Hazlitt," the only blank verse in the language, except Shakespeare's, that deserves the name of verse." The mere sound of his lines can sweep us along through the books of Paradise Lost. His very lists of the names of places fill us with a singular delight such as only Virgil can at all bestow. Listen to this

From Arachosia, from Candaor East,
And Margiana, to the Hyrcanian cliffs
Of Caucasus, and dark Iberian dales :
From Atropatra and the neighbouring plains
Of Adiabene, Media, and the South

Of Susiana, to Balsuras haven.

What pomp and pageantry of sound! Think of these lines

Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.

Can anything be grander?

What makes him hard to enter into and perhaps frightens some people off from studying him as he deserves, is the fact noticed by the writer of the Milton Article in The Times Literary Supplement of December 3, that "by the sheer force of intellect, imagination and purpose Milton imposed himself upon England, upon her thought, her character, her poetry," a truly stupendous achievement. The writer goes on to say that, "The familiar strength and sweetness of his lyric poems has never been compassed again; and his blank verse in the form in which he uses it remains the finest utterance. It is to Milton's poetry that men turn when they feel oppressed by the laxity and indifference of less strenuous times; and even those who disagree with him find themselves caught up and swept away by the might and majesty of his soaring. Other poets we may love, before Milton we bow the head."

In order to give some idea of the grandeur of Milton's blank verse, the following selections were read at one of our meetings.

AN INTRODUCTION

ΤΟ

MILTON'S MASK "COMUS "

THE Drama which was handed down by Greece to Rome tended to decadence throughout the Roman period. The people of Rome loved comedy more than tragedy and comedy was of two kinds, Palliata," which was in origin and style Greek, and used by Ennius, Plautus and Terence, and

Togata," which was native; and this, being fresher, survived longer than the other, but as it was also coarser in tone, it degenerated into buffoonery and scurrility and became a sort of pantomime in which dance and song and gesticulation by a single masked performer enchained the admiring crowd by suiting itself to the demands of a reckless and sensual age, and thus the stage eventually contributed as much to the demoralization of the Roman world as did the bloody spectacles in the amphitheatre and the maddening excitement. of the chariot races.

The whole authority of the Christian Church was naturally against it; and when the faith of that Church became the acknowledged religion of the Roman Empire the doom of the theatre was sealed.

The attitude taken up by the Church towards the stage was unavoidable, and little did the Church