79 
MILTON. 
By THE BISHOP OF BURNLEY. 
December 8 th, 1908. 
The tercentenary of John Milton was marked at the Club 
by the delivery of a scholarly paper by the Bishop of Burnley. 
Dr. Pearson said that a singular thing about the develop- 
ment of the poetical mind of Milton was that he seemed to 
supply an example diametrically opposite to that which was 
suggested in the lines of Young : “Thoughts shut up, lack 
air, and spoil like babes.” It was not so with Milton. For 
twenty years he ruminated over “ Paradise Lost,” a period 
during which he was largely mixed up with political agitation 
and pamphleteering. His literary career divided itself into 
three parts. We had his youthful productions, including 
that magnificent hymn on “ The morning of the Nativity” 
which he wrote when he was twenty-one. If this fine poem 
betrayed youth in the ornateness of its diction, in the over- 
lading of its imagery, or in its constant reference to the 
classical mythology, there was good excuse for this. Milton 
was so precocious in his reading, so absolutely omnivorous, 
that he was said to have got through the whole of the classical 
Greek and Latin authors before he reached seventeen. After 
touching on earlier poems, the Bishop dealt with Milton’s 
prose writings. At forty-three he lost the sight of one eye, 
and some have asked whether it was to his blindness that 
we were indebted for the “ Paradise Lost.” It was impossible 
for us to imagine that if the poet had retained his sight he 
could have produced a grander poem than that great epic. 
Difficulties were often the very tonic of effort. That which 
some people might be inclined to regard as a stumbling block 
might really become a stepping stone to higher things, and 
they believed it was so in the case of Milton. He was a 
disappointed man when he wrote “ Paradise Lost.” His 
political paradise had been absolutely lost, but just in the 
