With all the equipment that has been devised in the way of notes and comment by the best editors, the text of the great books of the world should offer no difficulties to one who understands English and who has an ordinary vocabulary. The very fact that some of these old writers have novel points of view should be a stimulus to the reader; for in this age of the limited railroad train, the telephone, the automobile and the aeroplane, it is well occasionally to be reminded that Shakespeare and the writers of the Bible knew as much about human nature as we know today, and that their philosophy was far saner and simpler than ours, and far better to use as a basis in making life worth living. MILTON'S PARADISE LOST AND OTHER POEMS A BOOK THAT RANKS CLOSE TO THE ENGLISH BIBLE--IT TELLS THE STORY OF SATAN'S REVOLT, THE FALL OF MAN AND THE EXPULSION FROM EDEN. In beginning with the great books of the modern world two works stand out in English literature as preeminent, ranking close to the Bible in popular regard for nearly four hundred years. These are Milton's _Paradise Lost_ and Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_. To those of New England blood whose memory runs back over forty years these two books fill much of the youthful horizon, for, besides the Bible, these were almost the only books that were allowed to be read on Sunday. It seems strange in these days of religious toleration that Sunday reading should be prescribed, but it was a mournful fact in my early days and it forced me, with many others, to cultivate Milton and Bunyan, when my natural inclinations would have been toward lighter and easier reading. But that old Puritan rule, like its companion rule of committing to memory on Sunday a certain number of verses in the Bible, served one in good stead, for it fixed in the plastic mind of childhood some of the best literature that the world has produced. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MILTON AFTER THE ORIGINAL CRAYON DRAWING FROM LIFE BY WILLIAM FAITHORNE AT BAYFORDBURY, HERTS] Milton's fame rests mainly on his _Paradise Lost_ and on his sonnets and minor poems, although he wrote much in prose which was far in advance of his age in liberality of thought. He was a typical English Puritan, with much of the Cromwellian sternness of creed, but with a fine Greek culture that made him one of the great scholars of the world. His early life was singularly full and beautiful, and this peace and delight in all lovely things in nature and art may be found reflected in such poems as _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, and in the perfect masque of _Comus_.