and the father's organ-harmony we yet hear in the son's verse as in none but his. Those organ-sounds he has taken for the very breath of his speech, and articulated them. He had education and leisure, freedom to think, to travel, to observe: he was more than thirty before he had to earn a mouthful of bread by his own labour. Rushing at length into freedom's battle, he stood in its storm with his hand on the wheel of the nation's rudder, shouting many a bold word for God and the Truth, until, fulfilled of experience as of knowledge, God set up before him a canvas of utter darkness: he had to fill it with creatures of radiance. God blinded him with his hand, that, like the nightingale, he might "sing darkling." Beyond all, his life was pure from his childhood, without which such poetry as his could never have come to the birth. It is the pure in heart who shall see God at length; the pure in heart who now hear his harmonies. More than all yet, he devoted himself from the first to the will of God, and his prayer that he might write a great poem was heard. The unity of his being is the strength of Milton. He is harmony, sweet and bold, throughout. Not Philip Sidney, not George Herbert loved words and their melodies more than he; while in their use he is more serious than either, and harder to please, uttering a music they have rarely approached. Yet even when speaking with "most miraculous organ," with a grandeur never heard till then, he overflows in speech more like that of other men than theirs--he utters himself more simply, straightforwardly, dignifiedly, than they. His modes are larger and more human, more near to the forms of primary thought. Faithful and obedient to his art, he spends his power in no diversions. Like Shakspere, he can be silent, never hesitating to sweep away the finest lines should they mar the intent, progress, and flow of his poem. Even while he sings most abandonedly, it is ever with a care of his speech, it is ever with ordered words: not one shall dull the clarity of his verse by unlicensed, that is, needless presence. But let not my reader fancy that this implies laborious utterance and strained endeavour. It is weakness only which by the agony of visible effort enhances the magnitude of victory. The trained athlete will move with the grace of a child, for he has not to seek how to effect that which he means to perform. Milton has only to take good heed, and with no greater effort than it costs the ordinary man to avoid talking like a fool, he sings like an archangel.