520 JOHN MILTON. 



from the transient matter ; and to publish apart, in a cheap compen- 

 dious edition, the beauties of Milton's prose. Such extracts would 

 become a popular classic, and invite to the perusal and possession of 

 the whole. 



" Milton, in particular," says Richard Baron, the editor of the 

 Iconoclastes, " ought to be read and studied by all our young gen- 

 tleman as an oracle. He was a great arid noble genius ; perhaps the 

 greatest that ever appeared among men ; and his learning was equal 

 to his genius. He had the highest sense of liberty, glorious thoughts, 

 with a strong and nervous style. His works are full of wisdom a 

 treasure of knowledge. In them the divine, the statesman, the his- 

 torian, the philologist, may be all instructed and entertained. It is to 

 be lamented that his diviner writings are so little known. Very few are 

 acquainted with them ; many have never heard of them. The same 

 is true with respect to another great writer, contemporary with 

 Milton, and an advocate for the same glorious cause ; I mean 

 Algernon Sydney, whose ' Discourses on Government' are the most 

 precious legacy to these nations." 



The massy theatres and granite temples of antiquity, which sur- 

 vive the successive demolitions and resurrections of the contiguous 

 habitations, are examined anew by every generation of travellers 

 with undiminished curiosity and awful impression. And shall pillars 

 of the literary world, which have remained from age to age so majes- 

 tically conspicuous, and which attest to a remote posterity the intel- 

 lectual wealth of the builder, not be viewed and reviewed by the 

 passing critic with a like courageous vigilance and admiring solici- 

 tude ? We shall notice, one by one, the leading traits here brought 

 together ; it would be an impiety against taste to pass them un- 

 regarded. 



The first consists of the two letters or books treating of Reforma- 

 tion in England. They vindicate Calvinism they teach that puri- 

 tanism of moral taste that preference of a naked and metaphysical 

 to a sensual and pompous worship and that zeal for a presbyteral, 

 rather than an episcopal organization of church government, which 

 distinguished the more successful of continental reformers. Milton 

 attacks, under the name of libertines, the favourers of Sunday sports 

 and human enjoyments ; under the name of antiquarians, the apolo- 

 gists of Roman ceremonies and fine arts ; and under the name of 

 politicians, those who were for weighing the different schemes of 

 hierarchy, not by their expediency for the people, but by their expe- 

 diency for the crown. It would have been worthy of the scru- 

 pulous and accomplished mind of Milton, to choose a religion for 

 itself, and to become the herald of an eclectic and peculiar system. 

 But he follows the track of his party with a subserviency which gives 

 to his treatise the appearance of bespoken work, of composition by 

 command. Nor has the style any of that catching glow, of that 

 eager spring towards its goal and purpose, which gives to the anxious 

 overmuchness of Baxter its animation and effect. One of the most 

 original portions is the fable of the men, but it is not fortunately 

 narrated. The record book greatly surpasses the former ; the re- 

 publican passages are more heartfelt than the theological passages. 



