AN INTRODUCTION

TO THE

PROSE AND POETICAL WORKS

OF

JOHN MILTON

Comprising all the Autobiographic Passages in his Works, the more Explicit
Presentations of his Ideas of True Liberty

COMUS, LYCIDAS, and SAMSON AGONISTES

With Notes and Forewords

BY

HIRAM CORSON, LL.D.
Professor of English Literature in the Cornell University

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1899

All rights reserved

36455

'Servant of God, well done! Well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause

Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms,
And for the testimony of truth hast borne

Universal reproach, far worse to bear

Than violence; for this was all thy care

To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds
Judged thee perverse.'

- Paradise Lost, VI. 29-37.

'O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies,
O skilled to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,

Milton, a name to resound for ages;
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starred from Jehovah's gorgeous armories,
Tower as the deep-domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches

Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean,
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
And crimson-hued the stately palmwoods
Whisper in odorous heights of even.'

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

MILTON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

From A Defence of the English People

From Second Defence of the People of England .

To Charles Diodati (Elegia Prima)

To Alexander Gill, Jr. (Familiar Letters, No. III.)

To Thomas Young (Familiar Letters, No. IV.)

To Charles Diodati (Elegia Sexta)

Prolusiones quædam Oratoriæ

To Father (Ad Patrem)

English letter to a friend (unknown) who, it appears, had

been calling him to account for his apparent indiffer-

ence as to his work in life

40-43

42, 43

43-44

44-46

Sonnet: On his having arrived at the age of twenty-three

To Alexander Gill, Jr. (Familiar Letters, No. V.)

To Charles Diodati (Familiar Letters, Nos. VI., VII.) .

To Benedetto Bonmattei of Florence (Familiar Letters,

No. VIII.)

From Mansus, Latin poem addressed to Manso, Marquis of

46

Villa

From Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed

printing