tas -, 
as! 
65 
there was Milton’s mulberry tree. Considering the trouble and 
disappointment he had met with in life, it was due to the greatness 
of Milton’s soul that his poems bore no trace of any feeling of 
the sort, and one wondered whether Milton would have written 
as he did if his life had not been surrounded by trouble and dis- 
appointment. As in the case of many great men, their genius 
seemed to have been nurtured and thriven on disappointment and 
trouble. (Cheers.) 
Mr. Fred. J.Grant, J.P., seconding, said the thoughts of the elder 
members were carried back to the early days of the Club, when 
noteworthy papers were read by ‘‘ the old man eloquent,” their 
former President—Henry Houlding—who had treated of some of 
the great dead kings of melody, among whom was Milton. It 
was well to study the works of those who stood at the head of 
their several departments in literature The works of such men 
were as the canonical books established beyond appeal by their 
own intrinsic merits, and by universal acceptance. They should 
read the great books just as they should mark the great events 
of the world’s history. The earliest of those marvellous essays 
which brought such fame to their author—Lord Macauley—had 
as its subject, John Milton, and it was suggested by the discovery 
among the State papers of a lost work of the Puritan poet. 
That work was edited by Bishop Sumner. It was in order to 
understand the parallel between Milton and Dante, drawn in that 
essay, that Robert Hall, at an advanced age, racked with almost 
incessant pain, set to work to learn the Italian language. Milton 
excelled not only in epic poetry but in other forms of poesy — 
- imaginative and idyllic, and in the sonnet. Where were there 
finer examples of the sonnet than in the lines on— 
«‘ The slaughtered saints of old whose bones lie scattered on the Alpine 
mountains cold.” 
’ or in the poem on his blindness ? One line in the latter sonnet 
is the oft quoted— 
«They also serve who only stand and wait.” 
Milton was a devoted lover ofnature. When all around became 
dark he ceased not to wander by clear stream and shady grove 
and sunny hill.. He had left a precious heritage in his shorter 
poems : ‘*Lycidas,”’ ‘ L’Allegro,” “‘ Il Penseroso,”’ &c. The stern 
Puritan—made such by the licentiousness of the times which 
angered his noble soul—was hushed to awe as he stood among 
the stately arches of Durham Cathedral ; and nowhere in the 
language are there finer lines on the English cathedrals and their 
services than is in the last-named poem, where he speaks of ‘‘ the 
antique pillars massy proof,” of ‘storied windows richly dight 
casting a dim religious light,” and of services which dissolved 
him into estacies and brought all heaven before his eyes. It was 
